As the prospect of a rematch in the US presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump grows, America’s allies are bracing for a bumpy ride.
Many fear a Trump second term will be seismic, but tremors are already abounding — and concerns are growing that the United States may become less reliable no matter who wins. With a divided electorate and a gridlocked Congress, the next U.S. president could easily become bogged down by multiple challenges at home — even before he begins to address hot-button issues around the world, from Ukraine to the Middle East.
French President Macron’s recent verdict was straightforward: America’s “first priority is itself.”
The first Trump administration stress-tested relations between the United States and its allies, especially in Europe. Trump mocked leaders of friendly countries, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May, while praising Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leadership Dictators like Vladimir Putin. He called China’s Xi Jinping “brilliant” and Hungary’s Viktor Orban “a great leader.”
In campaign speeches, Trump has remained skeptical of organizations such as NATO, often lamenting the billions of dollars the U.S. spends on military alliances whose support is crucial to Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression.
He told a rally on Saturday that as president he had warned NATO allies that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever it wants” to countries that did not pay for the alliance. Trump also wrote on his social media networks that the United States should cease all foreign aid donations in the future and replace them with loans.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that Trump could endanger U.S. troops and their allies. “Any suggestion that allies do not defend each other undermines our security, including that of the United States, and puts American and European soldiers at greater risk,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
Biden, meanwhile, has made support for Ukraine a key priority and a moral imperative. However, Biden’s assertion that “America is back” on the global stage after his election in 2020 has not yet been fully confirmed.Congressional Republicans delay more military aid to Ukraine, while U.S. influence fails to curb Middle East conflict
Thomas Gift, director of the Center for American Politics at University College London, said that no matter who wins the presidential election, the direction of progress is the same – towards a multipolar planet where the United States is no longer the “undisputed world superpower.” “
Most allied leaders will not comment directly on the U.S. election, insisting that leaders should be chosen by Americans.
Former senior official Richard Dalton said they realized they had to work with the eventual winner, whoever they were, and that behind the scenes, the government would be doing “behind the scenes work” quietly competing with the competition. Establish connections with the political team of the individual. British diplomat.
But many of America’s European NATO allies worry that the United States will become less reliable with or without Trump. Some countries have begun to openly talk about the need for member states to increase military spending and plan to build an alliance without the United States.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “currently on regular phone calls with colleagues asking them to do more” to support Ukraine. Germany is Kiev’s second-largest military aid donor after the United States, but Scholz recently told German weekly Die Zeit that it would not be able to fill any gaps on its own if “the United States is no longer a supporter.”
Trump’s comments about NATO on Saturday sounded alarm bells for Poland, which borders Ukraine. “A hot war is happening on our borders,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday.
“We must realize that the EU cannot become an economic and civilizational giant and a dwarf in defence, because the world has changed,” he warned.
Meanwhile, Russia is busy strengthening ties with China, Iran and North Korea and trying to weaken international support for Ukraine.
Macron also said that the United States is focusing its attention away from Europe. He said that if Washington’s first priority is the United States, then its second priority is China.
“This is why I want a stronger Europe, one that knows how to protect itself and is not dependent on others,” Macron told a news conference in January.
Trump does have supporters in Europe, especially pro-Russian populists such as Hungarian President Viktor Orban. But former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised some eyebrows when he recently said that “a Trump presidency might be just what the world needs.”
Johnson is a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, while Trump has often praised Putin and said he would end the war within 24 hours. However, Johnson said in the “Daily Mail” column that he did not believe Trump would “abandon the Ukrainians” but would help Ukraine win the war, make the West stronger and “make the world more stable.” .
Bronwen Maddox, director of the international affairs think tank Chatham House, said similar arguments underestimated the “level of instability” Trump has experienced and that would likely continue if re-elected.
“For those who say his first term did not do much damage to the international order, one answer is that he withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Since then Since then, Iran has accelerated its efforts to bring it to the threshold of becoming a nuclear weapons state,” she said in a recent speech about the year ahead.
Biden has criticized Trump’s Iran policy but has failed to rebuild bridges with Tehran, which continues to flex its muscles in the region.
Dalton, the former British ambassador to Iran, said the prospects for the Middle East under Trump would be “slightly worse” than under Biden. But he said differences over the region’s main tensions – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iranian ambitions – would be limited.
“The U.S. government is not going to make a serious effort to resolve its differences with Iran through diplomatic means. That ship sailed a long time ago,” Dalton told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters are pleading with Biden to reduce U.S. support for Israel as the civilian death toll from the war in Gaza continues to rise. But hard-liners in Israel believe the United States has overly restricted its offensive against Hamas.
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gver recently said that Biden did not “fully support” Israel and that “the United States will behave completely differently if Trump is in power.”
Like its allies, America’s rivals have not openly expressed a preference for the election outcome.
Trump has developed a close relationship with Turkey’s Erdogan, calling them “very good friends” during a 2019 White House meeting.
During his tenure, however, Türkiye’s relations with the United States were fraught with challenges. The Trump administration dropped Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet program over Ankara’s decision to purchase a Russian-made missile defense system, while Trump himself threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told CBS in January that he “does not think there will be any difference between the Trump and Biden presidencies.” He believes that Russia-US relations have been declining since George W. Bush took office.
China’s leaders’ initial enthusiasm for Trump turned into tit-for-tat tariffs and escalating tensions, with little to change under Biden, who has continued his predecessor’s tough stance on America’s strategic rivals.
Zhao Minghao, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that for China, the two candidates are like “two bowls of poison.”
“The world will become more divided whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is elected,” University College London’s Gift said.
“It’s just reality,” he said.